A perennial philosophy perspective on Richard Rorty's neopragmatism

Abstract

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Richard Rorty delivers a devastating critique of those strands of modern philosophy which concern themselves with trying to discover the truth about things, or, in the analytic mode, which attempt to define criteria for the truth values of statements about things.1 Two years after the publication of Rorty's book Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic philosopher and historian of science and mysticism, delivered the Gifford Lectures, subsequently published as Knowledge and the Sacred.2 In his highly articulate and intensely complex summary of what has been called "perennial philosophy," he too provides a powerful critique of modern philosophy, particularly positivism and linguistic analysis. What is intriguing is that the critique from the perspective of the perennial philosophy, that philosophy arising from mystical traditions, sounds very much like Rorty's neo -pragmatism. Less surprising is that the visions of the role and nature of philosophy which motivate each critique differ dramatically. These differences, we believe, are grounded in the anthropologies, the human images, which underlie the two positions and from which they argue.3 It is our task in this study (1) to explore the criticisms of modern philosophy offered from each position; (2) to compare their arguments and their underlying human images or philosophical anthropologies.